overwhelmed

Now the title of my post of saying it’s okay to get angry does not encourage you to go off on someone or lose your temper. That’s not what I mean. I teed up what I was going to share with you on my prior post Seeking and Finding Abundant Wholeness. Expressing our anger is sometimes exactly what we need to get unstuck.

When we don’t deal with issues that are stuffed down, it makes us feel stuck and overwhelmed. That was certainly the case with me. I was stuck. The process I used to get unstuck was the power of meditation and journaling.

I drew this meditation cartoon as an example of what happens when we don’t get quiet and do some soul searching. We can get wound pretty tight as a result!

I took a cartoon class a year ago and as a result I finally began to draw again after thirty years. You see, growing up I had always wanted to be an artist. That was my passion. As a kid you would always find me with crayons in my hand. As I became older (meaning a teenager) I moved on to charcoal, pastels and dabbled in some painting. Art was an escape for me. I was in my creative world where everything was fun and beautiful – a contrast to the reality of living in an environment with an unstable father who was an alcoholic. His drinking didn’t make him a happy drunk, quite the contrary. We never discussed Dad’s outbursts and violence. That’s pretty hard to process as a child.

“Be still and know that I am God,” is one of the most well known and beloved Bible verses for many. I was surprised to know the meaning of the words be still and I think this meaning (particularly in the New Testament) will surprise you too.

The words – Be Still – in the English dictionary can mean not moving, and being quiet. From a biblical perspective, these two words take on much greater meaning.